This was a pretty spread out process. My dad came to me last spring asking me to create business cards for their new neighbor.

For those of you who don’t know, a couple of years ago my parents made a big dream of theirs come true. They moved out to a farm in a town of about fifty people in the middle of South Dakota. I give my parents huge kudos for living out their version of the good life, and they’ve set a great example for me to live out my own version. Thanks guys :)

Annnyways. The business cards. Yes. When my dad gives me a project without a deadline, it almost always takes a year to complete. No joke! Hah. We finally made these a reality before Christmas, and I’m pretty happy with how they turned out. Their neighbor Paul is a hay farmer, and he goes by “Hey Man.” You know the best part about this project? Type nerds, get ready—I was able to use the typeface haymaker for an actual hay farmer. Kind of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, yes? It made me giddy.

For the cards, I experimented with a couple different type and image layouts on dribbble and went with some of your suggestions. This is the first time I was able to integrate dribbble comments in to my process, and that was a really neat experience! I’m definitely going to try and be more diligent about posting progress shots there. I had my dad go out to Paul’s farm and sneak some shots on his iPhone for the photo portion of this card. While I would have loved to shoot it myself, the natural beauty of the landscape there was hard to mess up (sorry dad!) so I was fine using an iPhone photo on such a small printed surface area. The back features a barbed wire detail, and a Hey Man monogram with space for notes. We used Stationery HQ for printing. They are amazing for both prices and quality — I use them for all my personal digital printing.

So in all, this was a pretty new experience for me. I feel like the clients I usually work with end up being a lot like me. They are usually females, and usually have a similar aesthetic. With this project, I definitely had to stretch myself and make a card that a farmer would love to use while still staying true to the Pinegate Road design aesthetic. Have any of you run in to this growth opportunity? What kinds of things helped you stretch past what you would ‘normally’ do? I’d love to hear!